Tribal Life

How to surround yourself with a group of men that will change your life.

Repping my Men's Group during a rafting trip.

This is not a first on the Anvil. If you follow this blog then you are not a stranger to my feelings about lone wolves and foolish macho men that think they have everything under control and need no help. This particular article is not so much about why you should be surrounded by men; as much as it is about how to be surrounded by men. My goal at the end of this is to give you a concise and specific road plan to living what I call "The Tribal Life".

Let me begging by stating that this is a very simple goal for me to achieve. You see, I am an extrovert. I walk in to a pub and walk out with three new friends an hour later. I have no trouble striking conversations with a complete stranger and making a fool of myself in public, all tho embarrassing, is not what I consider a death sentence. You might be an introvert, large crowds terrify you or at the least increase your awkwardness, and opening up to a group of people is next to eating fish heads on the list of things you want to do today. If that is you, then getting in to the tribal life might be a bit more difficult but not impossible or unnatural feeling as you may assume it would be. Which leads me to my first road point:

1. We need you.

I don't care who you are, or what your personality is. We, the tribe, is in desperate need of what you have. Until you are willing to accept this, you will never feel like you have a place to fit in. It is my belief that the only people responsible for out casts are out casts themselves. If truly out casts wanted to belong then they would have formed a tribe of their own once they realized that some other group with a misguided sense of pride rejected them. With that said, this might be a tough pill to swallow, but you need to understand that the only person responsible for your loneliness is you. If you want to be part of a tribe, then you must first accept that you are of value and that someone will benefit from knowing you.  Once you understand this it will be easier to bounce from a rejection (for what ever reason) rather than get wounded and assume that you where meant to do life alone. Don't believe the lies that say that everyone is against you and that no one else is going trough what you are going through. I can not say this enough, WE NEED YOU!

I was surprised my self when entering in to a group of men my senior, how many of them shared with me how much encouragement they have received form the things God has shared with me and the things I have gone trough in life. Even I, the youngest of my tribe, had something they needed, and I would have never known, have I chosen to believe that I have nothing to bring to a group of older burly men.

2. Either you find one or you start one.

Lets say you finally admitted to your self that you are of value to a group, and you look around an there is nothing, it looks like nobody is getting together to watch football, no one is going hiking, no one is fishing. If this is the truth then more than likely people are doing this things, they are just doing them alone wishing that they had a friend to do them with. When you get together with people to do life is when you start a tribe. For many people in the Christian faith these are usually called "small groups" but by no means does your tribe need to be endorsed or named by a Church. Simply find a group of people that you enjoy and make it a point to see them every week, after all, you cant do life together if you only see each other once a month. If like in my case, you find a group already established. Don't think twice and dive right in, after all if you don't like them, you can all ways change your number and address.

3.Open up.

A key part of tribal life is community, to create community you will have to be real and open up. After all, the only communities that exist that are fake, shallow and pretentious are the suburbs. And nobody except weird HGTV couples truly likes the suburbs. They make you mow your yard a certain amount of inches and get mad at you when you dress a dear on your driveway. What kind of life is that? Instead allow me to suggest to loose all facades that say that everything in your life is OK, the truth is that everything is not. You are a human right? So why in the world would you expect people to hear you say that all is good and not think that you are lying? I am not saying that your world has to be falling apart, personally things are pretty rosy for me right now, how ever, the men in my tribe, know about my struggles and challenges and stand in the gap for me.

There lays one of the great purposes of tribal life. When I am hurting, when I am weak, my brothers can help me. How can my brothers know to help me, unless I open up and share my weaknesses?

4.Grace, grace, grace, grace and more grace.

"I opened up and some dude ran his mouth with everyone, now everyone knows my personal businesses." If we have ever been part of any group, then we have all either heard of some one that this happened to, had this happen to us, or where responsible of doing this to somebody. Sadly this is human nature. I would love to say that my brothers will never hurt me, I would love to say that I will never hurt them; And all tho it is neither mine nor their intention to cause injury, more than likely, simply because we are around each other so much, some one is bound to shoot an arrow that will pierce right through your heart. Hopefully, it will not be as major as violating your trust and sharing your personal struggles with people outside the group. But if it happens you will need a vital component of tribal life and that is grace. Grace is what us Christians use to describe the never ending, unrelenting all covering forgiveness that God has towards us. As God has this towards us, we must have it towards people.

Grace is the only way to make intimate and life changing communities work. when you get up close and personal, you are bound to offend others and others are bound to offend you. The only way to survive is to literal;y be willing to forgive any and all infractions committed against you. I am Mexican, as a foreigner I have sadly received many jokes that are straight up racist, these did not come from strangers on the streets, but from friends. These jokes where not racist from the perspective of my friends, but from the perspective of the person whose culture is being mocked, it was completely racist. With this said, if I had taken offense to every single one of these jokes, I would be friendless right now. I choose instead to use grace, understanding that I myself have made crude and insensitive jokes before, that my friends are not in fact racist, simply misinformed and that if I spoke out about my discomfort, they would more than likely apologize. This is applying grace towards people. More people loose their faith in God and Church over some small offense that got way out of hand than a legitimate reason.

5.Listen
When other people begin to do life with you they will benefit from what you have to offer, but better than that, you can benefit from what they offer. You can not get anything from them if you are to prideful to listen. I know to many of these guys, they love to criticize everything, they are never impressed, they always have better advice and they are always alone on their critical high horse. Don't be that guy. If a brother approaches you wanting to help you, receive it. After all, they are around you all the time so they can spot the kinks on your armor that you can not see.

I love being in my tribe, those men know me, we laugh and joke with each other, they are blessed by my words and I am completely blessed by theirs. I will be joining them for a backpacking trip this week, and  you can bet that crazy stories and pictures will be coming your way when I get back.

I hope you can find your way in to a tribe after this, if you are in the Chattanooga area I would love for you to join mine, we meet at least once a week every Saturday morning at 9 am in the "Studio" next to the Carmike Theater by I-24. Thank you for reading and hope to see you next week.